Gobo Textures ( free to use )
pSyk0mAn
Nerdish by NatureGermany Join Date: 2003-08-07 Member: 19166Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Community Developer
Nerdish by NatureGermany Join Date: 2003-08-07 Member: 19166Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Community Developer
I've created a few generic gobo textures for everyone to use.
Various grating shadow effects, Fans, Stripes and Leaves.
What does this mean:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobo_(lighting)
Basicly you can make your shadow casting spotlights more interesting or set shadowcasting to false for performance gains.
Pros:
-Costs less performance
-Isn't affected by graphics option Shadows:off
-Doesn't fade out far away (unless you use insane shadow fade rates for your lights, which is bad for performance)
Cons:
-Static shadow, doesn't create player/structure shadows, doesn't work with rotating Fans
-Can bleed through walls onto geometry, which is usually in the shadow
-Atmospherics aren't effected by the Gobo texture, which means it doesn't look well with strong atmospherics ( @BeigeAlert would this be easy to change ? )
This can be useful, if you use soft, generic shadows casted by lights behind gratings, etc., which cover part of your room.
It saves performance, which can be used to set other spotlights to cast shadows, for overall more interesting lighting and shadows.
How to:
-Extract the materials/gobo_textures/ folder and files into ../natural selection 2/ns2/
-Make sure to include used gobo_textures in your mod.
-Click Gobo Texture in the attributes list of your light_spot and choose one of the provided gobo textures.
-Use an outer angle of 45-50 to use the whole gobo texture.
-Choose light position, max distance and intensity accordingly for desired effect (especially important to avoid bleeding through onto geometry, which shouldn't be hit by that light)
Just a little reminder, since there can be some trouble with proper folders and including the materials into your mapmod:
If you use launchpad to start your mapmod and editor, which you should do, you can put the gobo textures into source/materials/gobo_textures.
The editor treats the files like they were in your ns2 folder and they are properly included into your mod aswell then.
(If this doesn't work, put them into output/materials/gobo_textures)
Don't put your custom assests for your maps/mods into the ns2 folders, because then you run the risk of not noticing, when something is missing in your mod files due to the game using your stuff in /ns2/.. as backup.
Comparison:
Example, light from lava below grating in Furnace in NS2_Origin (first picture with gobo_texture, 2nd one with more expensive shadow casting light)
Might make more in the future or improve the current ones
Edit: Runestorm updated the gobo textures and added some more. Get them here.
Below are my orginal gobo textures, which include some sharper versions for some cases that can still be useful.
Various grating shadow effects, Fans, Stripes and Leaves.
What does this mean:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobo_(lighting)
Basicly you can make your shadow casting spotlights more interesting or set shadowcasting to false for performance gains.
Pros:
-Costs less performance
-Isn't affected by graphics option Shadows:off
-Doesn't fade out far away (unless you use insane shadow fade rates for your lights, which is bad for performance)
Cons:
-Static shadow, doesn't create player/structure shadows, doesn't work with rotating Fans
-Can bleed through walls onto geometry, which is usually in the shadow
-Atmospherics aren't effected by the Gobo texture, which means it doesn't look well with strong atmospherics ( @BeigeAlert would this be easy to change ? )
This can be useful, if you use soft, generic shadows casted by lights behind gratings, etc., which cover part of your room.
It saves performance, which can be used to set other spotlights to cast shadows, for overall more interesting lighting and shadows.
How to:
-Extract the materials/gobo_textures/ folder and files into ../natural selection 2/ns2/
-Make sure to include used gobo_textures in your mod.
-Click Gobo Texture in the attributes list of your light_spot and choose one of the provided gobo textures.
-Use an outer angle of 45-50 to use the whole gobo texture.
-Choose light position, max distance and intensity accordingly for desired effect (especially important to avoid bleeding through onto geometry, which shouldn't be hit by that light)
Just a little reminder, since there can be some trouble with proper folders and including the materials into your mapmod:
If you use launchpad to start your mapmod and editor, which you should do, you can put the gobo textures into source/materials/gobo_textures.
The editor treats the files like they were in your ns2 folder and they are properly included into your mod aswell then.
(If this doesn't work, put them into output/materials/gobo_textures)
Don't put your custom assests for your maps/mods into the ns2 folders, because then you run the risk of not noticing, when something is missing in your mod files due to the game using your stuff in /ns2/.. as backup.
Comparison:
Example, light from lava below grating in Furnace in NS2_Origin (first picture with gobo_texture, 2nd one with more expensive shadow casting light)
Might make more in the future or improve the current ones
Edit: Runestorm updated the gobo textures and added some more. Get them here.
Below are my orginal gobo textures, which include some sharper versions for some cases that can still be useful.
Comments
A lot more different gratings styles, also shadows from the scaffolding wall ( with net too), and one more leaf texture with a different style compared to the first one.
UPDATED Gobo Textures in first post!
If you use launchpad to start your mapmod and editor, which you should do, you can put the gobo textures into source/materials/gobo_textures.
The editor treats the files like they were in your ns2 folder and they are properly included into your mod aswell then.
(If this doesn't work, put them into output/materials/gobo_textures)
Don't put your custom assests for your maps/mods into the ns2 folders, because then you run the risk of not noticing, when something is missing in your mod files due to the game using your stuff in /ns2/.. as backup.
Just a quick reminder that the editor reads from the "output/*" directory, not the source directory. Builder reads from source, and writes to output, and should be the only thing writing to the output folder. (Rule of thumb: you should always be able to delete your output directory without losing data, eg. everything required to rebuild it is in the source folder).
EDIT: Oh also, @pSyk0mAn , you could blur that fan gobo to make it less pixelated if you wanted to (or take a higher resolution screenshot of it and downsample it for better quality). Unlike with a shadow map, you don't have to worry about keeping hard-edges for a gobo texture.
Gratings, fences, leaves, etc. There is a lot of potential, if done right, as long as the downsides don't matter (lack of player shadows, no detailed atmospherics, etc.).
I received permission from pSyk to recreate the gobos he made and I published them here.
The main difference between his and my version is that mine is a faithful recreation using substance designer instead of captures of shadowmaps within spark. This means that they don't contain any stepping artifacts or low res shadowmaps.